Water transfer talks fall apart again

State-prodded negotiations among four Southern California wateragencies to complete two deals that could be critical to theregion’s water supply dissolved into acrimony and finger-pointingonce again Thursday.

The deals, San Diego County’s long-proposed water transfer withthe Imperial Irrigation District and California’s QuantificationAgreement, would shift billions of gallons of water from ImperialValley farmers to San Diego County residents and win back years of"surplus” Colorado River water for the state.

But the largest of the four agencies involved, the mightyMetropolitan Water District, Southern California’s main watersupplier, opposed the deals on the table.

Thursday, that opposition caused the other three agencies -- theSan Diego County Water Authority, Imperial Irrigation District andCoachella Valley Water District -- to denounce Metropolitan and tosay they would now end years of negotiation and seek a way tocomplete the deals without Metropolitan’s help.

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The latest unraveling also left federal officials washing theirhands of the issue, Gov. Gray Davis’ office frustrated, and causedone influential state lawmaker to promise legislation that wouldstrip power from Metropolitan.

The four agencies have been quarreling for nearly a decade overthe two deals, the 35-year to 75-year-long San Diego-Imperial watertransfer, and the Quantification Settlement Agreement, California’spromise to gradually cut its over-use of the Colorado River. Thetransfer is the linchpin of the settlement agreement.

When the deals were not completed, federal officials in Januaryslashed Southern California’s Colorado River supply by enough waterto sustain 1.3 million households.

Davis has been trying to force the agencies to finish the dealssince March.

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Last week, federal officials announced they had presented thefour agencies with a simplified, take-it-or-leave-it proposal thatshrank the deals from 52 separate agreements into a 10-pagedocument.

The new federal deals also featured promises from the stateproposing to “solve” the biggest stumbling block surrounding thedeals -- getting state help to pay for the environmental harm theSan Diego transfer would cause Imperial Valley’s Salton Sea,California’s largest lake.

But while the other agencies seemed ready to accept the federaldeals, Metropolitan board members rejected them Tuesday after hoursof closed-door talks in Los Angeles.

The two-page resolution Metropolitan passed said it did notbelieve there was any “surplus” Colorado River water to be hadbecause of drought on the river, and that even if it existed,Southern California did not need it.

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At the same time, Metropolitan officials offered a new financialproposal, saying the Water Authority and Imperial should pay forthe costs to the Salton Sea -- which could reach the billions ofdollars -- without the state help they’ve been seeking.

In a gathering of water officials from around California andother western states Thursday in San Diego, Metropolitan GeneralManager Ron Gastelum reiterated that new condition.

“We’re ready to sign a deal tomorrow on this basic principle.We’ll pay for our transfers, you pay for yours,” he said. “Don’task for subsidies for market transfers.”

Metropolitan’s resolution reportedly caused Davis’ leadnegotiator, Richard Katz, to launch into a tirade duringnegotiations this week when he allegedly blamed Metropolitan forpurposely holding up the deal and threatened to move legislationthat would allow other water agencies to use Metropolitan’s775-mile-long system of pipelines even if they objected.

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Katz and others from Davis’ office, however, refused to commentThursday, even as the three agencies issued their joint pressrelease denouncing Metropolitan and saying they would now try tocomplete the deals on their own.

However, Assemblyman Joseph Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, chairmanof the Assembly’s Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife, said hewould push the legislation that would do the same thing Katzthreatened -- finding a way to let other water agencies useMetropolitan’s pipelines to move the San Diego transfer water.

At the same time, Canciamilla said he planned to proposelegislation that would block Metropolitan from completing its ownwater transfers in rain-rich Northern California.

Characterizing Metropolitan as a monopoly, Canciamilla said itwas wrong to allow Metropolitan to “scuttle” the San Diego transferand settlement agreement, and allow them to then turn around andbuy cheap water from Northern California farmers, move that waterthrough state water systems, and finally sell it to San Diego andthe other water agencies that would need the water because thetransfer was scuttled.

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“They (Metropolitan) shouldn’t be coming up to NorthernCalifornia to try to obtain water for their system that they couldhave gotten through the Colorado River,” Canciamilla said.